Your No-Nonsense Guide to Facebook Ads If you are in business, Facebook can play an important role in your marketing your business. It helps you connect and build relationships through updated posts. In fact, worldwide, there are over 1.35 billion monthly active Facebook users. Facebook advertising is another way to meet new customers and connect them to your market. On average, Facebook advertising reaches 89% of its anticipated audience. With Facebooks tools for businesses, you re able to set your budget and create your ads so that they reach all the right people in your target market. Other reasons why you should add Facebook ads to your marketing strategy include: Increasing your traffic Making more sales Building your email and customer list Growing your social media reach by getting more followers Building relationships and trust with your target market With Facebook ads, you have the ability to create multiple ads to help build your audience. Specific targeting options enable you to show your ads to only those people you want to reach. Facebook provides the tools to help you budget your ad spending and can track your ads to see which versions of your ads work best. In this tutorial, you will learn what the different types of ads are, all the features of an ad and the different ways you can target your ad. You ll also learn how to track your budget and the different payment structures available. Let s get started. Step 1: Getting Started
This tutorial assumes you already have a Facebook ads account and know the basics of setting up an ad. Here s a short reminder on how. Sign in to your Facebook account. If you don t have a business page, go ahead and set one up now. At the bottom of your home page, click on the Create Ad icon or from your page, click on the Advertise your page icon on the right side of the screen. The easiest way to create an ad campaign is with Facebook s ads create tool. Make sure you ve already gathered all the information you need for your ad. Basically, you ll need your website URL, the specific goal for each campaign, and the budget for the campaign and delivery. You will also need the time, date, or place, if relevant, and a photo to include in the ad. Choose your ad objective. This is discussed in the next section. Next, you need to add your text and images. Choose your audience and budget, which we look at closer later in the tutorial. Step 2: Choosing Ad Features Facebook ad features let you choose the placement of your ad and the ad s objectives. You ll need to choose an objective for your campaign. For instance, is your objective to get more likes or more clicks to your website? Each ad will get different results. This is the first page in setting up your ad.
Page Post Engagement Objective Page Likes Objective Clicks to Website Objective Website Conversions Objective App Installs Objective App Engagement Objective Local Awareness Objective Event Responses Objective Offer Claims Objective Video Views Objective Create ads that boost posts, increase likes, comments, shares, videos plays, and photo views. Increase your audience. Encourage people to visit your website. Promote a specific action you want people to take on your website. Encourage people to install your app. Get more activity on your app. Encourage local prospective buyers. Increase attendance to your Facebook page event. Promote your offers. Encourage people to view a video. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your website, you would select the Clicks to Website ad objective to get the responses you want from Facebook viewers. If you want to get people to sign up for your offer, you would select the Offer Claims Objective where you can add a specific call to action button to your ad. 1. Choose your objective. 2. Enter your URL or choose Page 3. Click to continue.
The Page Post Engagement ad objective drives likes, comments, shares, photo views, and video plays. These are all geared to getting people to engage with your posts. After you enter your page or URL, you have the option of using an existing post from the drop down menu. If you don t want to use one of these, you may create a new post to be used for the ad and will not appear on the page. Click to continue. You are then taken to a preview of your ad. Click on the different views to see it in a mobile setting, desktop setting, or right column setting.
NOTE: Be aware that Facebook ads appear differently depending on the device the reader is using to view Facebook, the viewer s location, and the results you want to achieve. The Page Likes ad format helps you get new fans to your page. This ad is similar to sponsored stories. The Website Conversions ad format, which directs traffic to your website, requires you to place a conversion pixel on the site. These pixels allow you to track the conversions from items like checkouts, registrations, key page views, and leads. How do you create a conversion pixel? In your ads manager page, click Conversion Tracking on the left side. Click Create Pixel. Name your conversion pixel and choose a category from the drop-down menu. Click Create Pixel. Copy the code and add it to your web page. It should be pasted between <head> and </head> on your web page where you want to track conversions. To see the performance of your ad objective, in the ads tab of your ads manager, click on the ad. Look for the Results and Cost Per columns. Results: This is the number of actions that resulted from your ad, connected to the objective you chose. Cost: This is the cost per each result for the advertising objective, which you selected for your ad, such as cost per click.
When you choose an objective, will you pay each time someone takes one of those actions? You ll pay for impressions (CPM) on your ad each time your ad is shown to someone, instead of when they click on the ad. With Pay for Impressions, your ad is optimized to target people who are most likely to take the action you desired with your objective. Ad Basics Text How much text can your ad have? Facebook recommends 90 characters or less and 25 characters for the headline. An ad s image can be no more than 20% text. Images/ videos You can select up to 6 images for your ad. You can choose Page photos, previous ad images, or upload new images. To select images for your ad: Using the ad create tool, specify your ad s objective and choose what you want to advertise. Fill in your ad headline and text. Choose your images. You may upload images from your computer, browse the library to add images from Page photos, or select an image from a previous ad.
The best size image to upload is 1200x627 pixels. Facebook recommends a minimum width of 600 pixels for images appearing in News Feed. Video Ad A video ad can be created in the ads create tool by choosing one of these ad objectives: Video views Mobile app installs Page post Engagement In the ads create tool choose your ad objective and what you want to advertise. Click on the Upload New Video or Browse Library to upload your video. Fill in the text and links you want in the ad.
Call to action button Facebook s App Install, Website Conversions, and Clicks to Website ad objectives all ask for a Call-to-Action (CTA) button. This is done when you are in the ads create tool. Choose the type of action you want people to take when they visit your website or choose No Button. There are Call-to-Action buttons like Shop Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Book Now, and Download. Now that you ve chosen your ad objective, you need to set up your campaign target strategy and set your pricing budget. Step 3: Targeting Strategies Targeting specific groups of people will help you get your ad in front of the people most likely to act on your Facebook ad. Set your target audience in the ads create tool. In the Audience pane, choose locations, age range, gender, languages, interests, behaviors, connections, or a custom audience.
Location: Choose what cities, countries, and communities you want to target. Demographics: Choose people based on things like age, gender, education, and more. For example, you can create different ads to appeal to different age groups or genders. Interests: Reach people with certain interests, hobbies, or the Pages they like on Facebook. Behaviors: Set this to find people based on their purchasing behaviors and device usage.
Connections: Reach people who are connected to your Page, event, or app. Custom and Lookalike Audiences: You can create a custom audience using email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs, or mobile advertiser IDs. This needs to be created first in your ads manager. You don't have to use all of the targeting options. The only targeting option that is required is country targeting. Location Targeting: You can target up to 25 countries per ad. When you add countries in the ad create flow, the Potential Reach on the right hand side of the screen updates to show the potential number of people you are targeting. You can target any combination of locations including: Countries and cities (ex: Paris and Italy, United States, and Toronto) States and cities (California and San Antonio) Cities and ZIP codes (Kansas City and 64025) You can target your ad to specific cities within a selected mile radius as well. Enter your country and city in the targeting section. Check the box net to the Include cities within and choose the radius you want to target from the menu. For example, choose Texas, San Antonio. Click on the name for a drop box to appear. Choose the distance from San Antonio that you want to include in your target location. This would be the mile radius.
Age & Gender Targeting: Choose the minimum and maximum age range of the people who will consider your ad to be relevant. Choose All under Gender unless you are specifically targeting men or women. Interests Targeting Options: Click on the Browse tab in the Interests field. This opens the most popular categories. Click on the + sign to see the number of people who are interested in the category. Choosing to enter terms into the search box will allow you to find millions of additional attributes and get suggestions based on the terms you enter. You can choose to target multiple categories or keywords from Interests and Behaviors. If you choose the categories fishing and hiking, for example, you will reach anyone who likes either fishing or hiking, not just people who like both. Connections Targeting: Use this to control whether your ad is shown to people who are already connected to you on Facebook. You may choose to show your ad to anyone, only
people who have a connection with you, or only those who don t have a connection with you. It can also be used to show your ads to friends of people who have connected with you. The more specific your details are the more effective your Facebook ad will be. Once you create the audience profile for your ad, you're ready to set a budget and begin tracking. Step 4: Setting Payment Structures After you set your target, you will have a better idea of how much your ads will cost. However, you should have a figure in mind before you begin setting up your payment structure and budget. Set a budget for your ad set and campaign. 1. Begin by setting your country, currency, and time zone if they are not already set. 2. Campaign: Your campaign can contain multiple ad sets. The default campaign will always be a new campaign for your ad. Your campaign name and objectives should be listed. If you want to edit the campaign name or move this ad to another campaign, click Change Campaign. 3. Ad Set Name: The ad set name will be pre-populated to make your ads identifiable. You can change the name. Make it something that you can easily identify it with in case you decide to add more ads to the campaign later. 4. Set your budget: The cost of advertising on Facebook depends on the size of your audience and your budget. Choose whether you want your budget set at a per day rate or for a set period. If you want to spend a set amount on your ad set over its duration, use the lifetime budget option. The minimum is $1.00 per day. 5. Ad Set Schedule: Choose Run my ad set continuously starting today, to run your ad continuously. Select Set a start and end date for a specific start and end date. 6. The pane to the right of the account settings will give you an estimated daily reach.
7. After you set your budget and schedule, you will get an estimate of how much your ad will cost. The cost of your ads on Facebook is up to you. You may choose between a daily or a lifetime budget, as well as a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) bid. You pay for the clicks or impressions you receive based on the limit you set. After your ad has started to run, you can change the ad set s end date if needed. If the ad is set for lifetime budget it will automatically adjust its pace to the remaining time left. Note: Facebook suggests you avoid frequent changes to the end date as it can interfere with their system s ability to optimize your ads. To change your daily budget after your ad is already running: Go to the ads manager. Find the ad set for which you want to adjust the daily budget. Use your mouse to hover over the Budget column in that row. Click on the pencil. Enter your new daily budget in the box and click Save. Allow up to 15 minutes for your budget change to take effect. Once you set your ad set budget, choose whether you want to pay per click or per impression. Choose how you want to bid for your ads: Bidding: Choose whether you want to bid for your objective, clicks or for impressions. This determines how you will pay and who will see your ad. Pricing: Choose whether you want to automatically bid for your ads or manually bid for your ads. An automatic bid sets your bid so it s optimized to reach your objective. A manual bid allows you to pick a maximum bid. With a manual bid, your ad will be optimized for clicks or impressions; however, it will not help you reach your objective.
Set an account spend limit for your ad account: An account spend limit lets you set an overall limit for your entire ad account. This way all your ads in your account will stop running once you hit the amount indicated. To set up an account spend limit in the ads manager: 1. Go to the Billing section of your ads manager 2. Click Manage under Account Spend 3. Click Set Limit or Update Limit in the top-right corner 4. Enter the account spend limit you'd like to use 5. Click Update Limit After you've confirmed your campaign and ad set, selected your budget and schedule, you ll need to place your order or review your ad. Tracking Your Budget Keeping track of your Facebook advertising budget helps you stay on top of your overall marketing expenses.
Billing can be accessed through the ads manager pane. In here, you can set your spending limit, your payment methods, track conversions, and manage your ads. The first time you create your account spend limit, you won t have a minimum or maximum amount. When you update your account, you must set a limit less than 10% above what you ve already spent. For example, if your spend limit is currently $150, you ve spent $100 so your minimum can only be lowered to $110. In the Billing Manager, you can find a detailed breakdown of your charges. Click on a transaction to see your charges, the charge date, and the impression or click charges. You can also create and export reports to see how well your ads are performing. Get Started: In the navigation menu of the Ads Manager, click on Reports. The default data is for General Metrics for the last 7 days of any active campaign. Customize the metrics to fit your needs. Click the blue Export button on the top right column to download your report. For your convenience, you can schedule reports to be delivered to your email, automatically. Click on Schedule and set the frequency, the start date, and your subscriber email. The report will be delivered by email on the day you specify. Tips and FAQs: Why is the amount you ve spent different in your Ads Manager, account spend limit, and in the billing sections? o o The amount you ve spent might be different since it appears as an estimate in your Ads Manager and your account spend limit. It takes up to 72 hours for your ad results to be fully processed. If you ve reached a new billing threshold, your amounts will be different as well. You are only charged for what you actually spend. The billing summary amount will be the accurate final amount. If you re advertising an external website or have chosen clicks as an objective, you re bidding on a cost per click basis so you won t be charged for your ad if it doesn t receive any clicks. Whether or not you have a billing threshold will determine how often you're charged for your ads. The billing threshold is different from your lifetime budget and daily budget. These determine how much you spend on ads. Your billing threshold is determined if you meet certain criteria: o o You have an ad account in US dollars (USD) or euros You're using a credit/debit card or PayPal to pay for ads on Facebook In US Dollars, the first threshold is $25 and increases with each successful charge to $50, $250, $500 and $750. In Euros, the first threshold is 20, and increases with each successful charge to 40, 200, 400, and 600.
It s important to keep track of your Facebook ads budget. It can be done with Facebooks ads manager billing summary and reporting tools. The Power Editor What is the Power Editor? The Power Editor is Facebook s bulk ads creation and management tool. It is designed specifically for large advertisers who need precise control of their campaigns and have hundreds of ads Where can I find Power Editor? The Power Editor can be accessed at www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor or by clicking Power Editor in the left column of your ads manager page. What s Next? You have created your ad but before you hit the publish ad button, make sure you your demographics reflect your target audience with as many details as possible. You need to choose the purpose for your ad as well. Is it to get more page likes? Do you want clicks to your website? Do you want clicks to an event or viewers to watch a video? You should also have a budget in mind and know how you want to bid on those ads. Ads on Facebook are a great way to market and gain more readers. The ads are shown to your specific target group, which is most likely to respond to your ad. Viewers can see your ad on both their desktop and mobile device so they don t miss out. Well-targeted and great content ads get more comments, likes, and shares. When people take action on your ad, their friends might see your ad as well.